L’aperto e Le Sue Chiusure / The Open and its Closures

Echoing the confinement due to the Covid pandemic, this course will explore the idea of the “open” and its structural opposite, “closure,” as they are expressed in Italian culture, between theory, literature, and cinema. From confinement (Boccaccio’s Decameron) to prison (Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks), from the sanatorium (Bufalino’s Diceria dell’untore) to the psychiatric hospital (Basaglia), from the brothel (with the Merlin Law) to the border crossed by migrants, we will interrogate various figures of the open and its closures. The philosophical reflections of Agamben (The Open) and Esposito (on community and its immune closure) will accompany our path. Course is taught in Italian.